The big winner this week on the Billboard Charts was country star Luke Bryan, whose album "Crash My Party" topped the Billboard 200 and sold nearly 528,000 copies. It's the third best-selling week for any album so far during 2013, trailing only Justin Timberlake's "The 20/20 Experience" (968,000 copies) and Jay Z's "Magna Carta...Holy Grail" (slightly more than 528,000) for one-week sales. Bryan has an advantage for the year on Jay however; his EP "Spring Break...Here To Party" also topped the Billboard 200 earlier in the year.
Tepid reviews didn't keep Bryan from having the best male country debut in more than nine years. Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying" sold 766,000 in its first week during November of 2004. According to Billboard, the only country artists to sell more than a half-million records in one week have been Bryan and Taylor Swift. It's not the first country album to top the charts this year by any means, with The Civil Wars selling 116,000 copies of its new album in the week preceding.
Bryan has also seen a boost for his latest single, "That's My Kind of Night," which rose from no. 20 to no. 16 on the country airplay chart. The first single off the album, the titular "Crash My Party," topped the country charts for three weeks when it debuted in July.
No. 2 this week was "Rebellious Soul," the debut from R&B up-and-comer K. Michelle (68,000), followed by "NOW 47," which sold 51,000 during its second week. Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" continues to hang around, selling 47,000 copies, and The Civil Wars stuck around for at least one more week, adding 40,000 in sales. Elsewhere in the country genre, Florida Georgia Line's "Here's To The Good Times" bounced back up to no. 8 during its 37th week on the charts.
For singles, Katy Perry's sales came to an estimated 525-550,000 download range, which would make it the third best-selling week for a single ever, behind Flo Rida's "Right Round" and Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."
